BitlBee is an IRC to other IM-chat-networks gateway created by Wilmer van der Gaast and others. BitlBee acts like an IRC server. You can connect to the server with your favourite IRC-client and start chatting with your friends on AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! and Jabber. Everybody in your buddylist appears as a normal IRC user in the channel #BitlBee. You can start a conversation with a buddy like they are real IRC users. BitlBee is licensed under the term of the GNU General Public License.

Startup

When you connect to a BitlBee server, you'll join the channel #BitlBee automatically, in the nicklist there is you and a user called root. Root is like an IRC bot, it listens to you and it'll help you further. Say 'help' in control channel and you will be able to talk to your friends soon.

Public Servers

If you don't want to run BitlBee server on your computer or if you are using Windows, you could try to connect to a public BitlBee server. Read the MOTD for server specific rules:

• im.bitlbee.org (maintained by the BitlBee team)
• testing.bitlbee.org (maintained by the BitlBee team, most of the time running the latest snapshot)
• im.us.bitlbee.org (St Louis, USA, maintained by Sound Solutions Internet)
• im.uk.bitlbee.org (Telford, UK, maintained by Sound Solutions Internet, SSL Enabled)
• im.everdot.org (Europe, maintained by xiando Corp, IPv6 Ready)
• im-usa.everdot.org (NYC, USA, maintained by xiando Corp, IPv6 Ready)

More public servers can be found on the homepage of the BitlBee.

Version information

• 2005-02-23: Version 0.92, running on Linux, Unix, BSD, Mac OS X and Windows (beta), license: GPL

See also

• List of instant messengers
• Comparison of instant messengers

External links

• BitlBee's homepage
• BitlBee Guide - Talk to msn, icq and jabber contacts using any IRC client